The Ultimate Guide To Boost Your WordPress Website Speed

May 1st, 2017 | by Ravi Chahar || 15 Comments |

The website speed has always been the pain for many. People strive to improve their website speed but only a few get success. Do you want to boost your WordPress website speed?

Well, this isn’t a question to ask. Everyone wants a website with an amazing speed so that their readers can engage more.

It’s all about user’s experience. The more you focus on providing the best speed, the more you get the visitors to your website.

Most of the WordPress beginners don’t have an idea about website optimization for better performance. There are thousands of guides showing uncountable tips.

But only a few can make you understand the concept of website optimization.

In this article, you will learn to boost your WordPress website speed along with all the basic things you should do when you start a WordPress blog.

What Is A Website’s Speed And How Can You Calculate It For Yours

Everyone talks about website speed and the things you should do to improve it. But what’s the concept behind it?

What is a website’s speed?

Keeping it simple, the time it takes to show its data to anyone is the website speed. It’s what we call the page loading time.

The minimum is better. It’s always recommended to keep your website speed under 3 seconds because people don’t wait more than 3 seconds for any website to get displayed.

You can relate to a situation when you try to open a website and it takes forever to display its content. I don’t think you would stay that long. Would you?

To calculate the page loading time for your website, you can use the website like GTMetrix and Pingdom which will test your website speed from the different locations.

GTMetrix will also show you the things you should do to boost your WordPress website speed.

Pingdom tools give you the freedom to choose any server from their list so that you can check your website speed from the different places of the world.

Both the tools give their ratings to the website. You just have to fill the URL of your website and within a few seconds, you will see the analyzation result.

Why is it Important to Have a Fast Loading Website

As I have mentioned before, it’s all about creating an environment which is favorable for your users. User experience is everything.

But if you think from the technical aspect and what are the other factors which are connected to the website speed then you will understand its importance.

Google loves fast loading websites and shows those the most as compared to the poor page loading websites.

No one wants to visit a website which keeps them waiting.

From the SEO point of you, it’s always recommended to have a website which is as fast as you expect others’.

The numbers of users keep decreasing just because of the poor website speed. You can’t risk your website authority just because of its speed.

To build a better website, you should try your best to keep the page loading time under 3 seconds. Many users even leave if it takes more than 2 seconds.

Know the Reasons And Boost Your WordPress Website Speed

Before you even starting taking any action, you should know what makes your website slow. What are the things you should fix?

#1. Web Hosting

The first reason is the web hosting you use. Most of the bloggers start with an unreliable web hosting and complain about their website speed.

It’s obvious that if the server your website on is not fast, your website would be slow for sure.

It’s always recommended to choose the best web hosting after doing some research. And if you have already bought any then you should see the signs that you should change your web hosting.

We recommend Inmotionhosting as one of the best, shared web hostings in the world. There are many other reliable web hostings like BlueHost, iPage, GreenGeeks etc.

If you want a managed web hosting then WP Engine is recommended.

#2. Caching

This is one of the biggest mistakes beginners make. They forget to install a WordPress caching plugin which keeps the unnecessary data flushed time to time.

Its absence leads to the burden to your website server and the request it gets from the readers become hard to handle.

This may eventually lead to the broken down of the server and your website goes down.

WordPress consists dynamic pages which need to be cached in the regular interval of the time and cache should be clear to run your website faster.

You can use the best WP Super Cache settings to boost your WordPress website speed. You can also use the plugin like W3 Total Cache and a few more free caching plugins.

#3. Image Optimization

No beginners think about the size of their images. They just look for the best and attractive images. They should know that the more image you upload, the more they consume the bandwidth of their web hosting server.

It means the size of their website will increase. The page size will not be user-friendly due to its speed.

Suppose you add three images of 100KB each. Including the content and the images, the page size will be more than 500KB.

It’s just an estimation. Depending on the design of your website, it can be more. What if you can reduce those images size without distorting the pixels?

Yes, that’s we call image optimization. You can use the website like TinyPNG or any other image optimization tool.

Image optimization is one of the sensitive topics you should focus on.

#4. Keep Everything Updated

Having the older WordPress version can be a vulnerability. It’s always recommended to keep your WordPress core updated.

And even for the plugins and themes. Outdated plugins and themes can conflict with other plugins which will lead to the poor website speed.

The processing of the outdated code may take longer time than the usual.

It’s not only about the speed, it’s about the security of your website. Many website owners don’t update their website which leads to a disaster.

Hackers can find the way to break into the older coding standards.

#5. Use A CDN ( Content Delivery Network )

A CDN acts as an intermediate between your users’ browser and your website’s server.

It stores the static files which don’t need to get uploaded everytime your user visits your website. Have you heard about the browser caching?

It’s kind of similar. There are many CSS, HTML, JavaScript etc files which get cached to a CDN which helps your website opens fast.

It also saves your websites from many attacks.

And the best thing is that a CDN can help you reach more people faster because of the different location than the server your website is on.

Suppose you use a CDN whose server is nearby your reader so your website will load faster as compared to your web hosting server which is available thousands of miles away.

You can use free CDNs like CloudFlare. You can setup CloudFlare within a few minutes. You can also use W3 Total Cache with CloudFlare.

#6. The Plugins You Use

Before even thinking about installing a plugin, you should test it.

There are thousands of plugins available in the WordPress repository and most of the WordPress users are running their blog just because of these.

A plugin is in the directory doesn’t mean it’s legit.

Any plugin can conflict with any other plugin and can lower the speed of your website. To boost your WordPress website speed, it’s always recommended to choose a plugin which can satisfy you.

Read the reviews, check whether it affects the page loading time of your website or not.

#7. Show An Excerpt Instead of The Full Post

You may have seen on many websites with the full blog post and many showing a small part of the post with an image.

That image is termed as the thumbnail image and those few lines are termed as an excerpt of the post.

There is always a debate on full post vs summary. But it’s always recommended to use the summary for every post. Show a list of blog posts and improve the page loading time.

You can set this from your WordPress admin panel. Just go to Settings>>Reading and scroll down to set the value either to summary or full text.

#8. Paginate The Comments

If you’re getting many blog comments then it would be better if you paginate comments.

Separating your comments into many pages will help your website load faster. It’s because more comments can put more load.

You can set the number of comments for each page using WordPress dashboard.

Go to Settings>>Discussion and you will see an option to split the comments into different pages. You can set the value for each page.

You can also set whether you want to show the latest comments or the older comments at the top.

#9. Break Longer Posts Into Pages

Longer posts always help people to learn more and even Google prefer to index those quickly. But to boost your WordPress website speed, you should split such posts into pages.

You can see it on the Forbes.com. They split their posts to have a better user experience.

People may feel overwhelming when they see a post going on and on on the same page. Whether it’s about the page loading time and the user experience, splitting your posts is effective for both.

You can simple add <!-nextpage-> from where you want to split your blog post. You can add pagination in WordPress also by adding a code.

#10. Use Sliders Carefully

Many websites are using sliders but they know how to handle its speed. For beginners, it’s not recommended to add a slider on their websites.

If you’re running a blog then what’s the need to use a slider. If you’re running a company website or an e-commerce website then you may need it.

And if you decide to use it then make sure you choose the fastest loading slider plugin.

If your web developer is adding it using any code, ask him to optimize it.

#11. Database Optimization

Most of the people forget about the database of their websites.

You should know the size of the database matters a lot in the page loading time of your website. You can’t boost your WordPress website speed until the database is optimized.

Whenever you write a blog post, save it, revise it, publish it, update it, the size of the database increases.

You can clean up your WordPress database using the plugins like WP Sweep and WP optimize. Use it once in a while and flush the unwanted data tables from the database.

Always remember to backup your WordPress database before applying any changes.

#12. Choose An Optimized WordPress Theme

The size of your website depends on the size of the theme you use. Most of the beginners don’t even think about it.

They just grab the theme they find attractive and all set. But there are many things you should do before buying a theme for your website.

It’s good that theme providers are adding more and more options to use. But not everyone uses those.

Always check the size of a theme you are going to buy. Having a simple yet elegant design always helps. You don’t need any extra features.

You can buy a better-looking theme from many theme distributors like Elegant Themes, MyThemeShop etc.

If you want a custom design, feel free to contact us.

Can You Now Boost Your WordPress Website Speed

The speed of your website is the first thing people notice. You can’t hide it. People will judge your website authority on the basis of its page loading time.

Don’t ever forget to backup your WordPress website before doing any changes. Whether you add custom code or test any plugin, backup your website, and the database.

All the points mentioned in this article can help you boost your WordPress website speed for sure.

Do you wish to have a fast loading website? Have you done any of the things mentioned above? What would you suggest to speed up your website? Drop your ideas below.

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